Texas Architect Sept/Oct 2012: Design Awards

Texas Architect Sept/Oct 2012: Design Awards

Editor’s Note
For Goodness’ Sake
On making great things happen
by Larry Paul Fuller
T
here is good architecture. And then
there is good architecture … as in
architecture for the public good.
This year’s statewide design
award winners — 13 projects from
Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin — are
a case in point. I was struck, during the awards
jury process, by how intent the jurors were on recognizing certain entries, not only for their merit
in terms of design (even design merit as broadly
defined), but also for their capacity to fulfill client
aspirations for the public good. Angie Brooks,
Eddie Jones, James Timberlake — all three jurors
were passionately committed to the idea that great
things can happen in a collaboration between discerning architects and socially responsible clients
within the pubic realm.
“Great things” includes the concept of
“human hope” — a thread that runs through
several of the winning projects. The theme could
be no clearer than in the very name of the Haven
for Hope Homeless Transformational Center in
San Antonio (page 78). The Cathedral of Hope
Interfaith Peace Chapel in Dallas (page 38) —
although commissioned by an institutional rather
than public client — also uses its name to define
“hope” as an aspiration. And in purpose if not in
name, the Houston Food Bank (page 62) stands as
what writer Ardis Clinton, AIA, terms “a beacon
of hope, illuminating the community and working
to improve quality of life for all those in need.”
In Dallas, the Brownwood Park Pavilions
(page 30) and the Cotillion Park Pavilion (page
34) serve the function of modest neighborhood
picnic shelters while rising, in form, to the level
of public art. And in Austin, the I-35 Makeover
(page 50) reclaims residual public space while
symbolically stitching together the prosperous
and gleaming CBD west of the freeway and the
modest, historically minority neighborhoods to
the east.
Human hope, accessible art, social justice.
These themes that infuse our projects for the
public good bring to mind the related term
“public-interest design” — which emerges from
the premise that design can be a way of improving the world. Sometimes it involves design initiatives funded by socially responsible agencies,
by enlightened foundations and corporations,
or by private individuals. Sometimes it involves
pro bono or “low bono” commitments by design
professionals. And, always, it involves the goal of
making people’s lives better.
For inspiration, check out PublicInterestDesign.org,
whose editor, John Cary, is an articulate spokesman for this rapidly growing field. And watch
future editions of this magazine for accounts of
how architects are contributing to the public good
— how they’re actively making good design accessible to more than a tiny privileged segment of the
population. This kind of change comes slowly. But,
clearly, it’s something to hope for.
The award-winning
Haven for Hope Homeless
Transformational Center in
San Antonio, by Overland
Partners, brings together in
one campus the necessary
individual and family
services to address the root
causes of homelessness.
9/10 2012
Texas Architect 7